Sleeping Cats

Today Mozilla Firefox 3 has finally been released.  This release, which has been in beta and RC for months, marks a great leap in the usability of Firefox.  These improvements include better support for the look of native widgets, the new AwesomeBar which integrates with the bookmarks and history, better JavaScript performance and lower and more maintained memory usage.  Also, under the hood changes now allow Firefox 3 to pass the infamous Acid2 test and history and bookmarks are now stored using SQLite.

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Some of Microsoft’s Window Live applications seems to be redundant for Vista, but some really seem kind of cool.  Take for instance Window Live Writer.  I’ve seen similar functionality in Flock, and other dedicated applications, but I really like Live Writer, just feels better.  This is actually my first post using it and I may continue using it for future posts.

It support most of the popular blogging software packages and of course Microsoft’s own Spaces. The look and feel really are much better than using the WordPress editor, and the application is definitely more responsive than any JavaScript based interface. (Except Firefox’s engine which powers it’s chrome)

Now, since my last post about the Firefox Preloader, I’ve gotten a few comments about it.  I wonder if anyone knows how to replace the Preloader with MinimizeToTray.  If not, I thought I might enlighten people who don’t know.  Now for the record I am currently using the Preloader since MinimizeToTray is not compatible with Fx 3b5 yet, but for you people still using Fx 2, here is how MinimizeToTray can replace the Preloader.

First create a copy of the Firefox shortcut from it’s program group to your Startup folder.  Now add the -turbo option to the command-line.  This will start Firefox without showing any Windows.  This does exactly what the Preloader does.  It also will all allow Firefox to shutdown completely and restart correctly when using the update system.

Now since people do still want to use the Preloader, I will look into updating it with fixes for the automated update system.  For the moment though, I am going to be working on the Glasser extension until Firefox 3 is finally released.

For all you people who have been looking for a way to get Vista’s glass effect in Firefox, look no further. Here is an extension for Firefox 3 that will do it. Please read this entire article before install this extension.

To get the latest version visit this MozillaZine forum post.

Please submit any support requests the the MozillaZine forum post.  Any comments posted on Sleeping Cats related to support issues with Glasser will be deleted.

Now I remember some years ago, I wrote the Firefox Preloader.  It was a small open-source application that would load Firefox in the background.  Now since then, a Firefox extension known as Minimize To Tray has appeared which offers the same functionality and then some.

Well, it’s almost three years old, and I have stopped working on it since the automatic update system for Firefox had trouble with it.  I also stopped using it since I now use the extension I mentioned before.  Even still, it seems people are discovering and using the preloader even today.

Here is a link to a site that has made an article about it this year.  This does make me ask the question that I titled this article.  I am also happy to see that my software has made it into Secunia’s database.

But in all this I would probably now recommend Minimize To Tray over my old Firefox Preloader until I can figure out a way around the software update system being unable to update Firefox while it’s running.

I know that this subject has been dragged out over and over but every one that does seems to be bias of one side or the other. Personally I prefer using open source servers and browsers; Firefox, Apache, and PHP; over Microsofts offering. My reasons for this are varied. I use Firefox because it is more secure than Internet Explorer and more customizable, and I use Apache/PHP because I am more familiar with it and I can also get make use of it’s advanced features on home and workstation versions of Windows. I also prefer FreeBSD over Linux because of being familiar. But how secure is all of this software. The results might or might not suprise most people.

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A method of filtering spam in Internet user interface data.

HTTP, the HyperText Transmission Protocol, uses many methods to allow users to send data to a web server from web browser. The primary method of getting this information is to present the user of the web browser with a fillable form in an HTML, HyperText Markup Language, document. When the browser submits this data, it formats the payload of the data either in the URL, Universal Resource Locater, or in the payload part of a POST request.

No matter what method is used, the web server does not know if a human controlled web browser or automated program, normally called a spambot, is used to submit this data. This allows these “spambots” to submit massive numbers of unwanted submittions to the forms processing program or script.

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Hellow folks. I just started trying out Yahoo! Widgets and Mozilla Sunbird. When I atempted to use the Day Planner widget included with the installer, it would not use Sunbird’s database. Of course, this is because Sunbird no longer uses iCal as it’s storage format for local calendars. But Sunbird still uses it for remote calendars, or those that or referenced by URLs.

This is a Little HOW-TO that will describe how to make these two get along.

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After hearing about Microsoft’s plans to not support the EFI BIOS in Windows Vista until the Server version (though others say this is only for 32-bit only PCs). I got to wondering what version BIOS my system had and if it is EFI. Saddly my 2005 ASUS A8N-E is not EFI. In fact, it is using the AwardBIOS 6.00PG. A BIOS that, judging from the copyright dates, hasn’t seen a major update since 2002 (the time when XP hit stores). This then made me wonder, why ASUS is still using this aging BIOS.

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Ever since AMD released their Athlon processors, they have become Intels most fearsome competitor in the CPU market. Starting with the clock speed race in back in 1999 with the release of the Athlon, ending somewhere in 2001. AMD and Intel went back and forth raising the clock speeds of their processors. At the time Intel processors could still out-perform AMDs at identical clock speeds but when it came to price versus performance, AMD won hands down. With equally priced CPU from both companies, that $200 Athlon out performed that $200 Pentium. But, those days of the clock war are over.

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